The Combat Table part 2 – Hit Rating

Yesterday we discussed how the Combat Table is important from a ‘getting hit’ point of view. Today, we’re going to dish out some damage ourselves, so let’s see how the Combat Table relates to when we are the ones doing the attacking!

I refer you to our first post on the Combat Table for reference on how the basic mechanics work. So why do we care about when we are the ones doing the damage? For a tank, damage equals threat, and threat equals a smooth tanking experience. One of the ways to scale your threat is to do more damage, and to do more damage, you need higher DPS weapons, AND you need to be able to hit the mob!

As players, we can help our chances to hit mobs by adding +hit to our gear. Let’s take our handy test Combat Table from our previous post:

Result

Chance

Random Value

Miss

5.00%

0 – 4.9

Dodge

10.0%

5.0 – 14.9

Parry

10.0%

15.0 – 24.9

Block

10.0%

25.0 – 34.9

Critical

15.0%

35.0 – 49.9

Crushing Blow

0%

Players can’t crush!

Normal Hit

50.0%

50.0 – 99.9

As you can see, we have a 5% chance to outright miss an attack. If we can mitigate this miss chance, that will directly increase how much threat we can generate. Adding 1% to hit, will remove 1% to miss. Unfortunately, adding 1% crit will not reduce your miss rate, it will only increase the amount of hits that are crits. As an example, if we add 1% hit, our new combat table will be:

Result

Chance

Random Value

Miss

4.00%

0 – 3.9

Dodge

10.0%

5.0 – 14.9

Parry

10.0%

15.0 – 24.9

Block

10.0%

25.0 – 34.9

Critical

15.0%

35.0 – 48.9

Crushing Blow

0%

Players can’t crush!

Normal Hit

51.0%

49.0 – 99.9

Increased chances to hit will directly impact the amount of threat you generate. Unfortunately not much tanking gear comes with +hit so if you want to get some +hit, you will need to choose wisely.

If you are an Armorsmith be sure to work to get the [item]Breastplate of Kings[/item] line of breastplates. This is also another reason why [item]King’s Defender[/item] is so nice.

So how much Hit Rating do you need? Well, about 16 Hit Rating translates into 1% to hit. So you don’t really need need more than 80 Hit Rating which will give you 5% to Hit.

In closing, definitely do not gimp your tanking abilities to get +hit, but if you can get some +hit, you will absolutely see an increase in your threat generation.